Is it Intel cancelling its 10nm process?.. Intel: No, we’re not

Intel has denied reports that
appeared in the media today claiming that it has cancelled work on its
long-delayed 10nm fabrication process. In a tweet posted to its corporate at Intel
news account today, the company stated: "Media reports published today
that Intel is ending work on the 10nm process are untrue. We are making good
progress on 10nm. Yields are improving consistent with the timeline we shared
during our last earnings report."

The story about the purported
cancellation first appeared at SemiAccurate, which cited unnamed “moles” within
Intel as its sources. The article describes Intel's alleged move as “the first
adult decision” that the company has made after repeatedly pushing back the
launch of 10nm Cannonlake CPUs due to insufficient yields. SemiAccurate did not
report any information about the Cannonlake product line specifically, just the
manufacturing process, leaving open the possibility that Intel could have
alternative 10nm process plans and product roadmaps in place.

Intel has repeatedly pushed
back the rollout of 10nm chips based on ‘Cannonlake', its first architecture
manufactured using the 10nm process, which was originally scheduled for release
in late 2016. The company first announced in mid-2015 that its long-running
‘Tick-Tock' model of refreshing architectures and shrinking manufacturing
processes every alternate year would be extended. It then introduced Kaby Lake,
an intermediary ‘14nm+' architecture, to fill the gap which was then supposed
to last till 2017. The company has since inserted Kaby Lake Refresh, Coffee
Lake, Amber Lake and Whiskey Lake processors into its roadmap, all manufactured
using 14nm+ or 14nm++ processes, while Cannonlake has still not shipped in
volume. The current timeline that Intel is referring to has wide availability
of 10nm processors slated for the 2019 holiday season.

Only one 10nm Cannonlake CPU
SKU, the Core i3-8121U, has so far shipped. It first appeared in one Lenovo
Ideapad 330 Ultrabook sold in China, and later in a pair of Intel NUC mini-PCs
codenamed ‘Crimson Canyon', but has not been widely available. Meanwhile, sole
competitor AMD has successfully adopted a 12nm process for its second-gen
‘Ryzen+' CPUs and has stated that it expects to ship 7nm server CPUs in 2019.